DON GONYEA, HOST:
Wait times at European airports are, shall we say, up in the air. The European Union has implemented new facial recognition and fingerprinting systems at border crossings and in airports across the Schengen zone. That’s the area of Europe where travelers can freely move without being rechecked at borders. It’s called the entry exit system, EES for short. It’s meant to keep better track of who comes in and who goes out. But the system has caused massive delays during Europe’s peak summer travel season, and airports and airlines have pleaded with the EU to temporarily suspend it. Gunnar Olson has been covering this story for the website Thrifty Traveler. Welcome, Gunnar.
GUNNAR OLSON: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
GONYEA: I understand you’ve used this new biometric system. So walk us through exactly what the experience is like.
OLSON: Well, my experience is probably going to infuriate anybody who sat in one of these long lines because I cleared EES with no line in about two minutes at the Rome airport in May, but I have a colleague who had the absolute opposite experience when he sat in a three-hour line in Copenhagen in June, after the kiosks all went down and they had to switch back to manual processing. So you could say that this experience is at least inconsistent for most travelers right now.
GONYEA: OK. And – but then what exactly did they do? Just kind of walk us through what the process is.
OLSON: Yeah. The process is you go up to one of these kiosks when they’re working correctly, and you scan your passport. They take a facial scan and your fingerprints. And if those things all work the way they’re supposed to right away, then you’re off. Sometimes these passport scanners are taking a long time. This happened to us on the way out of Italy, and it happened to my colleague as well a few times, where it takes up to five minutes of trying over and over for these passport scanners to work. And if you have a – you know, a wide-body plane full of 200 people all trying to get through at five minutes apiece, that’s a long line in and of itself. So this is what’s causing the backup.
GONYEA: European airlines asked the EU to pause the program because of just the kind of things that you’re describing. They did not get their way when they made that request. Is this slowness then expected to be just a new norm at Europe’s airports?
OLSON: No. I think what the European Union is hoping is that this is temporary, right? It takes a little extra time for these things to come online, for everybody to share their biometric data with the European Union. What IATA, the International Air Transport Association, wanted to do was just to punt this whole process outside of the peak summer travel months. The IATA says that people are missing connections. So this is critical for these airlines to keep their passengers happy, to have them not waiting hours-long line. So basically, what they want to do is just say, let’s try this another time. Let’s try and ease the tension in the lines here. And the European Union basically said, Look, this isn’t perfect, but we’re going to have to go through this at some point. We might as well endure the pain right now.
GONYEA: Is there anything passengers can do to try to, you know, anticipate and maybe mitigate this?
OLSON: The only thing passengers, I think, can do right now would be to rebook your trip through countries where they’re not participating in EES so you’re likely to not deal with the lines there, and you’ll have to connect on to Europe later in the day, but you’ll likely land at an off-peak time. It’ll give you a much better chance at a shorter line when you do arrive in the Schengen area and have to go through EES. But other than that, there’s not a whole lot you can do. I would just recommend packing your patience and being ready for a long line, if there is one.
GONYEA: OK. That’s Gunnar Olson, reporter at the website Thrifty Traveler. Thank you.
OLSON: Of course. Thank you.
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